Solace
by honeymoonspiders
Summary: A stolen moment. An incriminating photo. An insecurity. An angry Chuck Bass. And in the face of true love, you can't just give up.


_Title:_ **Solace**

_Rating:_ **T, later chapters might be M but we'll see**

_Pairing:_ **Chuck and Blair, hints of Nate/Serena, Nate/Blair, Nate/Vanessa**

_Summary:_ **A stolen moment. An incriminating photo. An insecurity. An angry Chuck Bass. And in the face of true love, you can't just give up.**

_**Author's note:**_** this is my interpretation of "the kiss" and the events that transpire afterwards. This episode begins with the kiss but the rest of it is Van der Bass family interaction. **

_Give me more_

_Than one caress_

_Satisfy this_

_Hungriness_

_Let the wind_

_Blow through your heart_

_For wild is the wind_

-Nina Simone

He placed his cold hand on her face ('_it was just like him to forget gloves_'_ she thought as his lips edged ever-so-slowly towards hers_) and kissed her. A soul-searching, curious kiss, inspired by a romantic isolated moment in a world where everything was too complicated to think about (_his family their history their lives)_. She kissed him back, and at first she wasn't even sure why (_because he's Nate and because she's Blair and even though she's older she still can't resist the pull of his empty eyes which she imagined way back when contained her hopes for the future)_, but then she remembers what it was like at fifteen, before everything (_ChuckSerenaChuckSerenaChuckSerena)_ fell apart and she remembers that it felt like she really did love him. He pulled away and stroked her cheek, so gentle and so… understanding.

His face was warm and he smelled of comfort, something Blair hadn't gotten much of lately (_parents missing, Yale gone, Serena too caught up in her drama to notice_), so she settled for it and even though a voice in her heart was screaming that this is stupid, she long learned to silence that voice, back in the days when Nate's eyes told her everything she didn't need to know about tan legs and long blonde hair and laughter.

She knew he'd changed (_he hasn't changed_) and she knew she'd changed (_he changed her_) so her mind couldn't find a reason (_ChuckChuckChuckChuck_) not to give it another shot, because that's what this kiss means, really.

­­––––––

Chuck Bass woke up in a good mood that day.

He had decided the previous day to go back to school, and was feeling oddly motivated. The sun was shining softly through the pearly grey clouds of late winter, and he had a feeling that the snow was beginning to melt and that maybe, just maybe, he could begin putting his life back together.

He glanced at his phone, feeling it vibrate softly on the mattress next to him. One missed call. Vanessa.

Vanessa? Now that was strange. They had come to a sort of mutual understanding and she no longer hated him, but they were certainly not on phone chat terms.

Surprisingly, that morning, Chuck chose not to analyze, and decided that he could call her back later.

Even more surprisingly, that morning Chuck didn't check Gossip Girl.

He padded down the stairs in his soft blue slippers, where he caught a glimpse of a blonde head of hair and heard some muffled noises, something about Chuck always eating all the strawberry cream cheese.

"Morning, Sis."

Serena looks up from her kneeling position next to the refrigerator, elbow deep in neatly labeled containers that the maid has spent so many painstaking hours organizing, and raised an eyebrow. Before she could make some unpleasant remark, she caught herself because she had to admit that it wasn't half bad having him around again (never out loud, of course).

"What if I started calling you bro? Hey, bro! Watcha doin', bro? Wanna play some guitar hero, bro?" Serena stood up, hands on her hips, settling for the blueberry cream cheese.

"Then I would think that we were in an Ashton Kutcher movie," Chuck stole the cream cheese from her as she bit into her bagel. Serena rolled her eyes and swallowed her bagel with a huge gulp of orange juice.

"I'm just saying, if I can't call you bro why should you call me sis? It's like misogyny… or something," she paused thoughtfully.

Chuck snorted. He would never admit it out loud, but he cherished these morning moments almost as much as he imagined she hated them. Yet as they stood there, elbow to elbow on the kitchen counter, he couldn't help but feel a bubbly warm feeling rising in his chest.

Lily walked into the kitchen, already impeccably dressed. She greeted them and then sat down to read the paper, while Eric made his way down the hall towards them, yawning loudly and mumbling some sleepy greeting before sitting down at the table with a pot of coffee in one hand and a jelly donut in the other.

Chuck would never admit it (out loud), but he relished these early morning moments. He liked that Serena always ate her bagel like a sandwich, and that Lily always touched his shoulder affectionately when she saw him for the first time that day, and that Eric was not a morning person and hated waffles and would get very huffy if the maid proposed them as part of the breakfast menu.

He remembered the night he moved back in he was so tired that he fell asleep early, and was awakened by Serena's high pitched voice and Lily's soothing one. Eric was sitting on the bed next to him, watching him sleep.

"Christ, Eric, Edward Cullen has nothing on you," Chuck muttered, propping himself up on an elbow. He hadn't even changed into his pjs.

"Before I get into how incredibly lame the fact that you made a 'Twilight' reference is…" Eric shook his head while Chuck muttered something about seeing it high on opium on pay-per-view, "are you really back?"

"It seems that way."

"Permanently?"

"I would venture to say so, yes," Chuck avoided Eric's eyes. He knew just how mean he'd been to him, the one person who had never once been mean to him or judged him. Finally Chuck looked up.

Eric broke into the brilliant Van der Woodsen family smile. Chuck remembered envying that smile when he opened the Christmas cards each year, alone. It was his own private Christmas eve tradition before he'd go out and get plastered on whatever he could get his hands on at 13. Eric put a hand on Chuck's shoulder.

"I'm really glad."

Chuck smiled tentatively, the gesture feeling foreign. A scene from "Beauty and the Beast" popped into his head, where Lumiere was trying to teach the Beast how to smile but he just ended up looking grotesque. Chuck didn't really know how to smile. Smirk, gleeful and evil grin, he could do. Smiling was hard.

Eric didn't seem to notice as he squeezed Chuck's shoulder and tilted his head. "I really missed you, bro."

They were interrupted by the door flying open and a frazzled Serena walking in swiftly, her high heels clicking on the marble floor. "Is he really here?!" she screeched, stopping dead when she caught sight of Chuck's disheveled form on the bed.

Chuck's heart sank a little bit; he should have known that she wouldn't want him to come back. He got up and ran a hand through his hair, wishing he had some scotch in his hand or something that wouldn't make him look so awkward.

"Look, if you want me to leave, I'll be out of here in ten minutes. Eric, tell D–" but he was interrupted by Serena's arms encircling him awkwardly. It took him a minute to register her actions, or the fact that she was sniffling, which both grossed him out and touched him, knowing that it would provide an endless source of teasing in the months to come.

"I'm so sorry," she choked out, stifling the snot and the tears threatening to burst out of her.

The saccharine was almost too much for Chuck to bear. He felt stifled and yet grateful for this big, blooming love all around him. He felt confused by his having done nothing to deserve it.

They spent the rest of the night playing Clue. Serena was always Miss Scarlet, who she insisted was her "lucky character" but in the end Eric always won, which pissed Serena off and endlessly entertained Chuck, because clearly Serena's deductive reasoning skills were not her forte.

Serena was playing with a lock of her hair, legs crossed and fiddling with her fork. She absentmindedly opened her phone and checked Gossip Girl, out of habit more than anything. Lately the scandals had gotten stale, and she felt old compared to the squealing freshmen and their eager willingness to rat out their classmates. What she saw, that morning, made her do a double take. She motioned to Eric to look at his cell phone.

"WHAT!" he exclaimed. Serena beckoned for him to be quiet, but too late. They had attracted Chuck's attention.

"What… a cute picture of Hazel! Don't you think so too, Serena?" Eric lamely attempted, while Serena blubbered "C-cute! Really cute!"

Chuck raised an eyebrow. He'd met squirrels in central park much cuter than Hazel. He pulled out his phone and clicked on Gossip Girl, taking a large gulp of orange juice.

"No, Chu–!" the Van der Woodsen siblings yelled simultaneously and Chuck choked on his juice, spitting it out all over the counter.

But it was too late. He'd seen it.

Blair and Nate, kissing in the snow, looking all cuddly and romantic.

_Reunited and it feels so good. Blair and Nate 3.0? _read the caption.

Chuck couldn't believe it. He looked over at Serena and Eric, who both had looks of shock mingled with pity painting their faces.

He looked back down at his cell phone. Blair looked insanely happy with Nate looking deep into her eyes, pretending to be soulful.

The sight made his blood boil.


End file.
